A Great Cloud of Witnesses
All that we say and do and think is being noticed. That should help us to keep on the straight and narrow, and help us run the race with diligence and perseverance. It is too easy to be swayed by what we see and hear in this world, but we must be more conscious of what can be seen and heard in the next.
The Christian is never alone. He is part of the Body of Christ. And what he does is always noticed, certainly by the Triune God. But one interesting passage of Scripture suggests that we are being watched by others as well. Consider what we find in Hebrews 12:1-2:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Now when you find a ‘therefore’ in Scripture, you need to learn what it is there for. And the chapter preceding this one is of course the great hall of fame chapter where so many past men and women of faith are listed and praised. After reminding us of all these amazing believers, the writer of this book urges us to run the Christian race with endurance.
The idea is that we should take strong motivation from knowing about all those who have gone before and finished the race well. And there is a two-tiered witnessing taking place here. We witness what they have done (as we read Scripture or church history or Christian biography, etc), but they may also be witnessing us.
Perhaps the saints who have preceded us into eternity are sitting around and cheering us on. “Go Bill – you can do it! Keep going!” Knowing there are so many great champions of the faith who might be supporting us in this way should give us a renewed passion to keep on keeping on.
It is the same for everyone in this life. If you have practiced and worked hard at something – perhaps as a pianist or a golfer – there is real encouragement in knowing that there is a crowd of onlookers, wishing you well and cheering you on. And if you know that a great pianist or golfer is in the crowd while you do your thing, you will try even harder to impress that champion.
One expository commentator and pastor wrote in his remarks about these verses how in his first year of preaching, he was told that two famous and well-known English evangelical preachers were sitting in the church. That made him nervous, but it also made him want to do the very best he could. R. Kent Hughes said this about that Sunday morning:
Now, I always prepare as thoroughly as possible and have always tried to do my best regardless of the situation, but I do remember consciously crossing and dotting my homiletical “t’s” and “i’s” that morning – though it is to be feared that my sermon was eminently forgettable! But my point is, the presence of notable witnesses is motivating, whatever one’s activity may happen to be.
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The Godless Bible
The reader should keep in mind that, for Alter, the Hebrew Bible is not one seamless book but a haphazard collection of texts. Biblical authors do not offer the same view of the one true God but different—indeed, rival—versions of God.
Robert Alter’s Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary is a massive achievement—literally. The three-volume box set weighs 11 pounds. The largest volume, with more than fourteen hundred pages, should be read with book and reader situated comfortably on the floor. These details may seem superficial, but a book’s format suggests its range of use. A large book of photographs craves a coffee table; a thin paperback rests comfortably in the seat-back pocket in front of you. A large, three-volume box set asks to be seen and not read. The tomes mark their owner as a sophisticated connoisseur of ancient literature. One need not read such things; one may simply own them.
Such is not the case here. I spent the last three years reading and annotating Robert Alter’s Hebrew Bible, typing over 20,000 words of notes along the way, and I found the whole process rewarding. Here’s how I approached the task: First, for each biblical book, I read the translation without any reference to the Hebrew, any translation, or Alter’s commentary. I then read his commentary in light of his translation, the Hebrew text, and translations in other languages (including, obviously, English). Very occasionally I’d dash to the Hebrew when first reading his translation, because I found my memory of the verse or verses so divergent from his translation. One obvious example: “And He said to me, ‘Man, stand on your feet and I shall speak with you’” (Ezekiel 2:1). “Man”? Not “son of man”? Correct. “The translation avoids rendering the term as ‘son of man’ because, after the Gospels, that designation took on Christological connotations.” I call this move ABJ: Anybody but Jesus. More on that in a moment.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Translation
What Alter does well, he does exceedingly well. Take the opening verse of Lamentations:
How she sits alone,the city once great with people.She has become like a widow.Great among nations,mistress among provinces,reduced to forced labor.
By delaying the referent of the pronoun to the second line, Alter gives the mind space to picture a woman sitting by herself. I imagine her on a pile of rubble, casting her gaze over a barren, windswept plateau. The phrase is simple but hauntingly beautiful. Alter’s translations at their best help the reader appreciate the beauty of the Hebrew Bible.
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He Made Them Male and Female
God created male and female, boys and girls, men and women. Our bodies are not opposed to our identities but, rather, give objective and biological clarification to who we are. We are not bodiless image bearers. We are embodied creatures because bodies matter. And bodies matter because God made them.
The first time the words “male” and “female” appear in Scripture is on page one. God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Gen. 1:26).
God would make image-bearers, and they would exercise dominion over the creation he had made. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27).
Then God blessed his image-bearers and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28).
God made Adam and Eve as embodied creatures (Gen. 2:7, 22–23), and their embodiment had a sexual design because they were capable of procreation. Their maleness and femaleness were not separate from biology but were clarified by it.
Now, of course, in a Genesis 3 world, not every male will father a child, and not every female will deliver one. Reasons for this abound. Nevertheless, we must notice that in Genesis 1:26–28, maleness and femaleness involve sexual complementarity. Moreover, God had told the man, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (2:18).
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7 Ways to Blaspheme God’s Word (Part 2)
The woman has an incredible responsibility for the future blessings of her home. She gets the right and the privilege of finding the kind of man who will love her like Jesus loves the church. And once she has found that man, she gets to help, encourage, and spur him on so that everyone and everything her marriage touches will be blessed. Far from being a trophy wife, she is central and critical to the blessings of her home.
3 The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— 4 that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. – Titus 2:3-5 NKJV
Where We Have Been
As you will remember from last time, the apostle Paul used the word blasphemy when it comes to denying God’s view of womanhood. He was saying that if there were any older women, or anyone else for that matter, who was teaching a view of femininity that is contrary to God’s vision, then they have blasphemed God’s Word (a crime punishable by death in the Old Testament). Yeah, God takes womanhood that seriously.
Instead of blaspheming God’s Word, Paul instructs older women how to come alongside the younger married women in the community. He calls on them to teach the younger women how to love their husbands and their children. Instead of loving them in a purely sacrificial way, which is so common for women, Paul admonishes the young women to become joyful “husband lovers.” Paul’s goal was not for women to slave away in the kitchen and dutifully serve their families as embittered slaves. On the contrary, he was calling women to be the lifeblood of the home. To fill the atmosphere and the aroma of her castle with abundant mirth, overflowing joy, and infectious delight for all who know her.
These were the first two of seven essential concepts about womanhood that Paul was teaching, and again, we looked at these things in part 1. This week, in part 2, we look at the final five concepts that the older women are to teach to the younger women so that the Word of God will not be blasphemed.
Supposing you are still here because you would not like the Word to be blasphemed, I say onward.
#3 Teach Them to be “Moderate”
In addition to husband-loving and child-loving, Paul calls younger married women with children in the community to adopt a moderate lifestyle. The word he uses for sensible in the NKJV above (σώφρων – Soph-ron) really means embracing a life of moderation by living in the middle. He is encouraging women not to find themselves on the polls of things or to live in the extremes but to find her place somewhere in the balanced middle. Paul says if life were like a seesaw, then stand on the pivot point. This contributes to healthy womanhood.
Now, before anyone can accuse Paul of being a world-class sexist, remember that he just commanded the men to be moderate as well (Titus 2:2). And, when we remember that Paul also gives this character qualification for anyone aspiring to the office of eldership (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8), we should not view this as being peculiar to women, but simply an excellent quality to cultivate for any human. Paul is not saying that men are more moderate and women have some work to do. He says we are all prone to excess, and both genders need work here.
For instance, Men are disproportionately prone to the kinds of immoderation that lead to risk-taking, aggressiveness, adventure and merry-making, overworking, accumulating shotguns and rare bottles of whiskey (on the gluttony side of immoderation), and neglecting emotional aptitude, communication, relationship-building, and physical health (on the anorexic side of immoderation). While women can certainly be immoderate in these ways, it is far more likely that a woman will struggle with moderation in spending, emotional overexpression, communication, comparison, dieting, perfectionism (On the high side), and isolation, bitterness, and jealousy (On the low side).
These are generalizations, but Paul’s point in this passage, in particular, is for women to live moderate lives. To be content with that, she has. To avoid excess. To avoid asceticism. To live in the middle. And by doing that, she will live richly and conform to the pattern God has for her.
#4 Teach Them to be Pure
Along with moderation, Paul encourages younger women to remain pure and chaste in their behavior and life. Like a young virgin who is keeping herself pure for her future marriage (1 Corinthians 11:2), and the man who sets His mind on the pure truths of God (Philippians 4:8), the godly woman will also keep herself pure in mind, heart, and body within her marriage. She will prioritize holy purity with her God. She will weed out sin, give no occasion for the enemy, and offer to her husband the continual gift of tender, loyal, and loving fidelity for a lifetime. This, of course, will bless and build up womanhood.
#5 Teach Them to be Workers at Home
Some of the strongest language in the Bible has to do with when, where, and how men and women will spend their time. For the man, He must leave the home to gather resources. If he lazily loiters around the house all day, twiddling his thumbs and refusing to go to work and provide for His family, Paul says that man is “worse than an unbeliever” and that he has “denied the faith” (1 Timothy 5:8). Ouch! On the other hand, a wife is called to stay home. And this is not unclear in this text. Paul says if a wife and mother leave their home to join in the rat race, neglecting her house duties, her husband-loving, and all the needs of her children, then she has blasphemed the Word of God.
The reason Paul speaks this way is because men and women are not the same. We are equal in personhood yet distinct in our roles. As male and female, we have a divinely appointed complementarity in the roles God has given us.
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